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This DJ Wants To Twerk, Squawk And Shimmy His Way Into Your Cold, Dead Heart

Emir Kobilić, who performs under the name Salvatore Genacci.
YouTube
Emir Kobilić, who performs under the name Salvatore Genacci.

In a few of its occasional flashbacks, the TV show The Good Place has had fun at the expense of EDM DJs, depicting a world of preening, empty spectacle and performances that consist of little more than a dope in a costume pressing a space bar and pantsing around. It's not entirely fair, but it's funny. It's also, as parodies go, positively muted compared to the antics of Bosnian-born Swedish DJ Salvatore Ganacci at last weekend's Tomorrowland 2018 festival in Belgium.

He twerks! He does a handstand! He yelps, over a generic and disjointed mishmash of electronic music at strange and unhelpful times! He... I mean, watch for yourself. "Sacha Baron Cohen channeling the spirit of Andy Kaufman to make fun of EDM concerts" about describes it, but at the same time, this is a performance with commitment. Say what you will about Salvatore Ganacci: He is not phoning his performance in.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)
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